As it is generally known, the illegal sharing of copyrighted material over the Internet through peer-to-peer (“P2P”) networking programs results in significant amounts of lost revenue for the music, movie and software industries. It has been estimated that the music and movie industries lose billions of dollars a year as a result of unlicensed file sharing, and that a ten percent decrease in global software piracy would create millions of new jobs. As a consequence, there is a great interest in techniques for controlling digital transfers of copyrighted materials, in order to stem these losses.
Some attempts to identify and control illegal file sharing have involved the use of digital water marks, consisting of bit patterns embedded into copyrighted files to identify the source of illegal copies. These efforts have proven ineffective. Similarly, attempts to incorporate special codes into media storing original copyrighted material to prevent unauthorized copying of the material to a computer system have also been unsuccessful.
Network service providers, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs), are currently being taken to court to determine their potential liability for the transfer of unauthorized content in P2P traffic flowing through their networks. Additionally, these network service providers frequently face network congestion in their shared networks caused by large amounts of P2P traffic. These conditions are driving network service providers to find some way to control the use of their networks with respect to illegal file sharing.
A number of traffic management products exist that can identify P2P data streams based on detection of P2P protocol traffic. These systems operate to block P2P traffic, gather accurate statistics regarding P2P traffic, or impose traffic management, such as bandwidth limits, on relevant network links. For example, existing systems include products of PCUBE Labs, Allot Communications, Ltd., Packeteer, Inc., Ellacoya Networks, and Sandvine Incorporated, that detect P2P protocol traffic and manage network parameters. However, these systems are limited in that they cannot identify sharing activity related to a specific file, have no way of informing a copyright holder that a specific file has been copied, and fail to seek or facilitate in any way authorization of a detected file sharing activity.
For the above reasons and others, it would be desirable to have a new system for preventing illegal sharing of copyrighted material over a communications network. The system should provide a mechanism for notifying copyright holders that their files are being shared, and enable copyright holders to promote payment for the use and/or copying of their copyrighted files.